Dear Colleagues:

The National Science Foundation’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has a mandate to ensure universities that receive their funds are populated by researchers who understand and use good practices in the conduct of research. It is helpful to run through the ground rules from time to time, and the ground rules have been changing in recent years.

When a university has an incident that relates to any kind of regulatory violation in areas such as research misconduct, plagiarism, conflict of interest, mismanagement of funds or bad practices with human or animal subjects, the consequences are serious, not only for the individual, but for all their colleagues at the university. Indeed, the OIG can suspend ALL funds going to the institution, while an investigation is carried out. Obviously such an action would seriously harm the university’s reputation as well as our capacity to maintain the healthy growth in research that we have been experiencing in recent years.

As a preemptive step, and to refresh our understanding of current expectations in terms of proper conduct of research, we have asked Dr. Scott Moore from NSF OIG to give us a presentation on the kinds of things that “get them anxious”. There will be at least two repeat “performances”, so that people have an opportunity to ask questions; an additional session may be arranged if capacity is exceeded at the earlier sessions.

Who should attend? All of us who are involved in research and teaching need to be very familiar with the ground rules so that this shared understanding is transmitted to our undergraduate and graduate students; it is an essential part of their learning to understand not only what the rules are, but why they are in place. Others who should be present include technicians and research associates, postdoctoral fellows, and anyone involved in the conduct or administration of research grants and approvals of expenditures. Indeed, anyone who can influence colleagues in terms of promoting good practices. It is critical that we be as informed as possible about academic ethics and proper conduct of research; and we hear Scott puts on a great show!

Please register early to help our planning process. We look forward to seeing you there.

For additional details, schedule, and registration "click here"